


goodbye

by xxpaynoxx



Series: aventures à paris [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, and gerard is pissed obviously, basically how ney and leo deal with the transfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:55:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxpaynoxx/pseuds/xxpaynoxx
Summary: our time had a home.(x)Leo understands things, and says goodbye.





	goodbye

He should feel betrayed. He should feel used. He should feel _hate_.

Leo is sitting in the dark of his room, scrolling through his alerts. Everywhere he looks, he sees _miracle signing_ and _222 euros_ and Neymar’s face thrown onto a shitty photoshop job of him in a Paris jersey on every news outlet out there. And God, Leo should feel so much against this but he can’t help but feel like he _hadn’t_ been lied to, that he knew Neymar would leave and he was just clinging to a lost hope that had dissipated before last year.

He would be a fool to not notice the boxes that he had not-so-secretly been piling up in his room, or the way he looked at his practice jersey in disdain rather than excitement like he had these past five years. Luis had taken note of it, but he had clearly left things to Leo to sort out.

It makes Leo remember the night before Neymar left, the one after New had told him he was staying. And he can’t feel hatred towards him as he relives that night.

_Leo’s hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, the question he had been wanting to ask hanging in the air; he just had to vocalize it._

_“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”_  
  
He watched Neymar jolt up from staring out the window, before ducking his head to look down at his folded hands. “Yes, I am,” he whispered, a shaky confirmation that should hurt Leo’s heart, but it…doesn’t. It should hurt, it should feel like a stabbing pain like when Xavi left and Puyol retired, it should be painful. 

_But it isn’t._

_“Why?” he asked simply, and Neymar took a deep breath. Leo could see the tear tracks forming on his cheeks, flashing in the passing streetlights, but he waited until the boy was finished._

_“I just…I hate it here. I loved it and now I hate it. The pressure, the fans, those stupid fucking taxes…there’s something wrong with me, Leo. There’s something wrong in my head and I don’t know what it is, and I just…need somewhere else to go to get away from it. I can’t keep doing this, I can’t keep putting on a jersey for a team that I’ve fallen out of love with. I tried last season, I tried to love it again but there was nothing. I hated myself, Leo. My only happiness was international break, playing with Brazil and Dani and Couti and Rafa. It wasn’t here. I figured if I went to Paris, at least I’d know a few people. Thiago, Dani, Marquinhos…they’re all there and waiting for me. I think they’ll take better care of me than here.”_

_Leo’s hand slipped from the steering wheel to reach over and grasp Neymar’s thigh in his grip._

_“Hey. I know. I understand. I respect your decision, I’ve been feeling the same way.”_  
  
The look on Neymar’s face was almost comical.

_Leo pulled up in his driveway before throwing the car into park and looking over. He was still gripping Neymar’s thigh, and he didn’t let go as he began to speak, Neymar’s awestruck, glittering eyes trained onto his lips._

_“I don’t love it here either,” he declared. He instantly cursed himself, regretting telling the only person other than Anto who really cared about him who is going to be leaving in less than forty-eight hours to another country and a new life. But that’s the nature of breaking bad news; avoid collateral damage by telling a significant other bad news just before they leave forever._

_“Why don’t you just leave?”_  
  
Leo laughed at that, a short laugh with no humor in it. “Can you imagine how people would view me? Lionel Messi leaves a disintegrating career behind at the City of Dreams,” he joked, and that one got a small giggle out of Neymar before the car fell silent again.

_“It’s also because I just…I can’t leave. Barcelona has been my home ever since I was small, they practically saved me. It’s not the same for you, you haven’t grown up here, you have no attachment to this club. You can leave, I can’t.”_

_“You could. You could come with me! Play for a small French team! You’d have no pressure, raise the kids, everything!”_  
  
“Neymar…I can’t do that.”  
  
Neymar’s face instantly fell, but Leo reached out and cupped his face, making him keep eye contact with him.

 _“This is your journey, and yours alone. I wish you the best on it, and I know you’ll do great things in Paris.”_  
  
Neymar took that as a dismissal, and went to get out of the car. Leo reached for the lock, and Neymar froze as he heard the click of the door locks turning on.

_“You’re not going anywhere, at least not tonight.”_

_The look he received from the Brazilian was a mixture of shock and something else that makes his eyes glitter and warmth rush straight to Leo’s middle._

_The next few hours were a blur. There was just Neymar’s warm, dark skin, all over again, just like against the lockers and in the bathroom and against the dashboard and finally in the bed against the stark white sheets. But unlike all the other times, it wasn’t full of just desire; there was a somber tone to it, a tone of goodbye._

_Leo spent all night worshipping Neymar’s body, trying to remember how his body felt underneath his hands, memorizing every scar and nook and cranny and storing it in the back of his head so he can remember how it felt when he’s missing him and Neymar is a country away._

* * *

Neymar leaves early in the morning the next day, and the kisses he leaves against Leo’s shoulder, cheek and lips burn as he hears the front door shut quietly behind him.

And just like that, he’s gone, like a ghost.

Leo doesn’t harbor bad feelings against it. Gerard certainly does, especially because the fiery Spaniard logs onto Instagram that day and realizes that Marcelo and Sergio Ramos have followed Neymar back. He curses for a good five minutes, deleting Neymar’s contact from his phone and ranting about how he lied to him.

“And you! You saw him last, did you not try to make him stay?” Gerard roars in Leo’s direction.

Leo turns to face his friend and finds his face mere inches from Gerard’s, ice cold blue eyes boring into his own, teeth bared in a snarl. “Did you not think to tell me he was leaving? You let us all be played like a fiddle by a _Brazilian_?” he continues in his rant. Leo remains silent until Gerard is finished, and he wraps up his tirade with a punch to the locker above Leo’s head before sitting down heavily on the bench in the middle of the room.

Rafinha is gone, and thank God for that, because Leo knows he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate the slander that had just been committed against his best friend’s name. Although, maybe Gerard would’ve gone for him as well, considering Neymar had definitely spoken to Rafa about his transfer long before Leo himself…

Gerard’s broken voice snaps him back to reality, a stark contrast to how he was acting earlier.

“Why?” is the simple question he asks, and Leo is, luckily, no longer asking this question to himself from the conversation Ney and he had last night. He also remembers a short note that he had left on the bedside table, in his compressed, elongated handwriting.

_Don’t tell anyone._

So Leo chalks it up to the taxes and Dani, and Gerard seems to accept this as an answer and leaves without so much as a goodbye.

Leo is left standing in the locker room alone, and he finds himself gravitating to a locker beside his. The number is still on it, as well as the name. The crew hasn’t taken them down yet, they only remove them as soon as the season starts. But Leo decides to do it himself, unfeeling the _Neymar Jr_ name from the locker and folding it neatly to slide it into his bag. He places his hand on the cold locker, the unit looking like any other locker in the room.

“Goodbye, _mi amor_ ,” he whispers, tears pricking at his eyes as he turns away and flicks the lights off on much more than just a locker room, and leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> this got sad. but i hate that i can't have neymar do any wrong. this is my reasoning behind the transfer; it's none of my business whether this is actually true or any of these events transpired, but i believe this is why neymar left.


End file.
